The trouble with soup is it's never there when you need it most

Soup delivered to your door when you are home from work sick - could be the answer SA’s looking for? Photo: News Corp. Australia

EVEN as a foodie, I’ve kind of always subscribed to the idea that soup is an ­ingredient’s last chance to be food before you throw it out.

And before you say it, YES, I’ve had good soup. I’ve had some great soups, made by great chefs using excellent ingredients.

Don’t get me wrong. I LIKE SOUP. I’m Italian. How could I not like soup??

It’s there in the handbook, chapter 9, section ii, paragraph 7.

“Whatta ya mean a you don’t like a zuppa?! Everybody likes a zuppa! You mother make a this a beautiful zuppa and you a gonna eat it! Don’t make me get the spoon!!”

It’s not meatballs or a steak but soup and I get on just fine.

My biggest problem with soup is that it’s rarely there when you need it most — when you’re as a crook as a dog and in no condition to be sauteing onions and dicing ­potatoes.

I was sauteing onions and dicing ­potatoes at home sick last week when it suddenly struck me — why the hell isn’t this already a business? An emergency winter soup hotline for the sick. “Soup for you!”

The government is always going on about creating new jobs for South Australians.

There you go, I just created 500 new ones, not to mention opening up a lucrative new supply line for our vegetable growers and bakeries.

I can just see Jay Weatherill and I now, standing shoulder to shoulder as we launch the glossy brochure. “Strategic plan. Soup for ALL South Australians.”

The food would come in a souped-up mini-van shaped like a dinner roll and you wouldn’t even have to use your swollen tonsils to order. “Just dial 1 for tomato, 2 for cream of chicken 3 for mushroom ...”

SA’s ageing population would run the service off its feet in the winter months and in summer, well ... Jay and I still need to hammer out the finer details.

Maybe staff could retool the line and make emergency icy pole drops to homes without adequate air-conditioning.

Possibly my best since “The Bed-verge”, a bedside CamelBak-style drinking pouch that lets you take hydrating nighttime night-time sips through a hose, putting an end to glasses of water on the nightstand and those unsightly spills!